


Dust

by Glenstorm63



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:48:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29371851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glenstorm63/pseuds/Glenstorm63
Summary: The backstory on the origins of the little box of dust used to make the Yellow Rings and Green Rings is revealed. Cross-over between The Mists of Avalon and The Magician's Nephew.
Kudos: 3





	Dust

Dust

Morgaine had been wandering long in her extremity, her mind scattered. Morgaine thought she had called many times to the Goddess to help her escape the madness. Raven had called out to her, her voice harsh but she could not be found in Morgaine's shifting dreams. It was this that had stirred her. And at last the strange mazes, the sumptuous arms and mocking laughter of the land of the Faerie Queen had abated.

And several things finally became clear as self-awareness returned. As she pushed her way through drifting mists, Morgaine realised her hair was a mass of snarls and bits of stick, she was without shoes and she smelled like a cheese wagon. And here she was catching her ragged skirts in yet another thicket!

Morgaine called again plaintively, desperately to the Goddess. But knowing full well, that any special favour of the goddess carries an equal duty to return, she found enough self-presence to make a formal offer. "Oh Goddess of the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, the great Darkness and the Stars, please help this lost woman! If there is aught I can do to help rid this world, any world, of great evil, let me be your agent!"

And almost immediately Morgaine found all the dampness , the tangles and thorns fall away.

She tugged herself from the last thickets and stepped into warm placid light. She looked up.

As far as she could see there was green filtered sunlight through trees twining their boughs far above. Were they beeches or elms or lindens? she half wondered. But these trees seemed to be none of them. And they were all alike. Then, as she cast her eyes downward, she realised she stood on gently undulating ground with the fragrance of the freshest grass imaginable rising with every step she took. And immediately to her left was a large, almost circular pool. And about thirty feet away between more trees, was another such pool. And on. And on. And on. The trees and pools seemed to go as far as the eye could see.

Morgaine turned on the spot.

Just more trees, grass and pools. There was no sign of where she had come from. She nearly panicked again. For if she had had little sense of direction before, now she had none. There was no sun to be seen. It was like being in the misty woods. But then… no it was not.

If anything, Morgaine felt that she was sitting atop the world somehow, no, all the worlds. She felt eternal. Now that was a mesmerising thought. The warmth and fragrance and the shear green growingness of it all was a balm. The Goddess was alive and Morgaine felt she had been gathered into her arms.

She knelt down at the nearest pool and drank of the water. Cool. Fragrant. Clean. Pure. There were no fish or tadpoles to be seen. No water boatmen. Just fine red sand and mud at the bottom, a few inches deep. No buzzing of flies or bees in the warmth. No cooing of a wood pigeon from above. Was there any crawling, flying, walking or speaking thing here, anywhere?

She could only hear the grass and the trees growing around her.

...

In short time Morgaine removed her rags and wandered naked upon the grass. Then she plunged into pool after pool, lying on her back, scissoring her arms and legs, scrubbing herself with the red sand, washing all the grime of how knew how much time from her limbs and her secret places.

This peaceful silent forest was one of the Goddess's places of wonder and power. She could feel it. No harm could possibly come to her here. So Morgaine curled upon the grass and slept. Such a sleep she had never had. Not since she was a child in Igraine's arms at Tintagel. Before Arthur was born. But all memories of that also fell away and Morgaine slept in peace.

Morgaine was never sure how long she slept. But she knew it was long. Never in all the moments of half slumber when she opened her eyes just a peep, did she ever see it grow dark before she fell into deeper sleep all over again.

After an age, Morgaine began to see that if she did not stir herself she might lie here for ever, maybe becoming a mere pile of dry skin and bone, eventually to be covered in grass.

She sat up, suddenly wondering where she had left her clothes. Morgaine cast about, looking in all directions, if directions there were. Finally after much searching, she came upon her dark bundle about ten pools away.

The clothes were all rank, tattered and grey.

So Morgaine knelt in the nearest pool and washed her clothes, scrubbing with the red gritty mud until they were heavy with it.

She flopped them about in the stirred up pool and trod on them vigorously, feeling the blood of renewed life pounding through her vein, throbbing at her temples.

But when she came to rinse out the sand in the next pool which was clean and placid and a good deal deeper, she found the sand and dust could not be removed. Indeed, when she laid the cloths out on the grass, she found the sand and mud had somehow filled the rent and threadbared fabric.

Her rags had become a perfect full high waisted skirt of rust red velvet, a long sleeved shirt and an undergarment of rust red linen. Even the grey rag which had once been a thick woollen shawl to protect her against the winter chills had returned, now the wool of a red sheep spun and woven in the finest patterns.

Aghast and excited, grateful and humble, Morgaine laid them out on the turf, turning the precious things until they were dry, clean and fragrant. Then she put them on. They felt sumptuous.

Short, ugly little Morgaine she felt no more. Here now, she felt smooth, erect and gracious. More than one time in her life she had been touched by the Goddess and she knew she was on the path of purpose. Even her dark locks were full about her shoulders again. Still touched with grey no doubt, but she had not felt so full of life for long, very long indeed.

She stirred herself to working out how to leave. To even consider that was difficult. Her sleepiness kept threatening to wash back over her. She stood there contemplating, staring into the green silences, rubbing her eyes, listening to her own heart beat. She looked about wondering where exactly she wanted to go. Faces and places washed through her mind. Avalon, the barges across the water, Raven, Accalon, North Wales, Lothian, Lancelet, Elaine. Then Arthur and Gwenhwyfar came to her mind.

At that moment, the pool near her began to gather with mist and in a few moments the pool was covered in a swirling white, puffs of soft vapour rising.

Morgaine wasted no time. She stepped off the turf into the misted pool. For a moment there was sand under her feet. Then it gave way. She fell, faster and faster. The water rushed upwards at ever increasing rates but somehow she could breathe. She could see the stars rushing past, hear the voices of angels and spirits calling from afar before she distinctly saw huge red, brown and white balls swing past her, revolving in the firmament.

Her skirts whirling around her, Morgaine felt herself plunging into the depths of a huge blue and white disk. And before she knew what had occurred, the town of Camelot was below and then her bare feet stood on solid stone.

It was clear air and dark blue skies over the highest turret in the earliest morning. A few stars still glimmered. An early pipit called. Morgaine took a lungful of cool air, shifted herself and descended the winding stair. Seeing no-one, Morgaine wandered through the halls and finding the kitchens and a low fire, settled herself down, warmed her feet and found a pot of oat porridge. No doubt it had been set there by the cook or the scullery servant to break their fast, so she ate only a little.

Once the hullabaloo of the King's sister being found in the kitchen was over, Morgaine was ushered into Arthur and Gwenhwyfar's presence. Of course, they demanded to know how she had got into the castle and where she had been for the last few years but she just shrugged and said it was a mystery to her too.

She thought Arthur looked tired and worried about many things, as well as offended at her crypticity. But that could not be helped.

Arthur had much business at hand, so she spent the day spinning with Gwen and her maidens, not bored out of her mind as she had expected. Gwen was as tense and consumed with her own narrow-minded morality as usual, but as long as she didn't make too many references to seemliness and the Christ Child, Morgaine could tolerate her. The peace was companionable but after her recent experience, not profound. The velvet of her skirts was remarked upon and the single dark colour admired although with some arched brows. But what did a Priestess of the Isle of Avalon care about such jealous posturing?

That night, Morgaine carefully removed her magical clothes and laid them in a chest at the end of her bed and she climbed into a slightly long nightshirt which one of the Queen's women provided her. She was also offered women's ordinary day clothes for the following morning as her fine red weeds were too good for everyday wear.

That night, Morgaine felt more at peace in the world than she had for a very long time and slept like a log.

And in her dreams she did come to feel that it might be important to blend in a little more whilst she was at Arthur's court so the next morning she did don the loaned garments.

But three days later, there was a cry of terror and pain from the women's quarters. Morgaine raced from one chamber to the next, two of Gwen's women close on her heels. There on the floor next to Morgaine's clothes chest, knelt Edwina, one of the serving women. She was shrieking and weeping, clutching her arms.

"Oh no! You meddling fool!" she cried.

But Morgaine just as quickly knelt and saw. The serving woman's hands were blistered and running. And before their eyes, the blisters travelled up the women's arms and Edwina collapsed, shuddering, a low rising moan uttered from the depths of her soul, all her limbs shaking, her body undulating. Then with a sickening sound, her limbs fell to nothing and in moments her clothes were empty save for a few broken bones and a weeping mess. All the women excepting Morgaine fled from the room, but even Morgaine vomited, just as they, retching in horror and pity and guilt.

For she had also spied, that instead of the beautiful clothes, what now lay in the chest was a pile of fine red dust.

Morgaine shut the lid and sat on it weeping. What had she done? She had vowed to help rid the world of an evil, but it seemed she had unleashed one instead.

She must dispose of this somehow. And oh, how she would be accused of devilry!

Morgaine searched around the room desperately. In the corner on a settle was a small box.

Shaking, she ran to it, grabbed the box, emptied its contents willy-nilly. In the midst of her franticness, she remembered it as having been a gift to Arthur from one of the Breton princes, possibly crafted by the ancients, a dark wood embossed with silver and bronze medallions, perhaps even of Atlantis.

She quickly grabbed a small broom from the fire grate, opened the chest, carefully stood it on its end, and swept every last speck of the dust she could find into the ancient box. Then lifting the heavy chest bodily, she thudded the bottom with her hands and tipped what she hoped was the last of the dust out of the corner into the box.

The rancid mess of broken bone shards, damp wool and linen, she carefully folded onto itself, saying prayers of forgiveness and pity. The broom she set to burn, finding a hot coal buried in the ashes, onto which she added more sticks before piling the awful bundle on top. Thankfully it began to roar.

All this she achieved within minutes.

But her vomit was still strewn on the floor. No matter. She had done what could be done. Now she must leave to prevent more harm.

She took a blanket and threw it about her shoulders. Taking the box, she concealed it in a fold and darting down the nearby stairs, disappeared from Camelot forever.

…

Nearly fourteen centuries later a young woman had taken to digging on one of the swampy isles of Somerset when she came upon a box shaped mass of pitch, deep in the gritty mud. She was an amateur archaeologist and spiritualist and she claimed descent from Gwydion, Morgaine and Arthur's son. Her fingers pricked as she hauled it to the surface and she knew she held the prize she had been looking for. Her name was Morag LeFay.

…

Upon her deathbed, she called her closest confidante to her, her godson of thirty years. Amongst many promises, he solemnly agreed to go into her locked room and there retrieve a number of arcane items for his personal use. But one item she forbade him from keeping or using. She made him swear an unbreakable oath that at the earliest opportunity he would destroy an ancient box that was filled with the most dangerous and potent substance imaginable, a substance she had never been able to identify but which she knew to her own sorrow could never be touched by living thing. To destroy it, it must either be thrown into the hottest furnace or a volcano, or dropped, opened into the deep sea.

He bent down next to her bed and she laid his hand on his head and she slipped peacefully off to eternal sleep.

He did not keep this promise. Indeed the furnace or volcano suggestions sounded far too much of a risk for his own person. As for the sea, he had always been rather prone to seasickness, so that did not happen either. So the box sat in his most secure cabinet in Dorsetshire and later Camden and he pondered its uses.

His name was Andrew Ketterley.

…


End file.
